The market for personal portable electronic devices, for example, cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDA's), digital cameras, and music playback devices (MP3), is very competitive. Manufactures are constantly improving their product with each model in an attempt to cut costs and production requirements.
In many portable electronic devices, such as mobile communication devices, displays present information to a user. For example, electrowetting display technology can display video and text information. This low cost reflective display technology comprising electrowetting light valves, may be used to produce stacked black and white, or colored, shutters over a reflective surface. Typical electrowetting devices use a DC voltage to change the wetting properties between a solid and a liquid, thereby moving the colored oil like a shutter in and out of view. Color electrowetting schemes use absorptive oils of Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow for the highest efficiency subtractive approach. The ‘open’ condition of the shutter is transparent (not black or white) so that the underlying colors are visible when the first color is “off”.
These reflective displays are built above a reflective surface that reflects ambient light through the device to illuminate the oil or lack thereof. When ambient light is insufficient, the displays are difficult to see. Conventional displays have included a backlight that provides a white light vertically through the display and through the oil or lack thereof, to be viewed by the user. However, this backlight requires additional layers adjacent each pixel in the display and several additional process steps in fabrication.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a portable electronics device having a self illuminating display that reduces both the thickness of known displays and processing steps in the fabrication thereof. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the invention and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the invention.